The power of Facebook remarketing

Facebook remarketing straight from the experts

Remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to target and convert the right Facebook audiences with the right content. Find out how it can improve your ROI from social media guru — Jon Loomer.

We’ve sat down with Jon Loomer, global Facebook expert, to uncover the advertising possibilities of remarketing on Facebook and get his key insights on the best strategies for brands. Here’s an inside scoop of what we found out.

What is remarketing?

Remarketing is a great way to deliver targeted ads to people who have visited your website or used your mobile app. The way it works is simple: a lead visits your website or app and goes to a specific web page. Based on their website journey, you can expose them to a targeted Facebook ad that is relevant to the web page in question.

“There is nothing more powerful for Facebook ads or advertising in general than remarketing. Brands are normally in two situations about remarketing. They are either already getting traffic to their website or they are starting from scratch with no traffic. In either case, if you are not using remarketing, you are missing the boat.”
– Jon Loomer

Here’s an example: many of us often visit airline websites to find the best flight rates. At times, we are in doubt about what we want to buy, so we find ourselves pausing the online research before purchasing a ticket. While we might forget about our traveling plans for a while, many of the traveling websites don’t. By using Facebook remarketing, they remind us of our purchase intentions. In practice, this means that next time you log into Facebook, a special offer from that very same travel website will pop up in your News Feed, showing the exact destinations you were researching.

Why use remarketing?

If you are a brand that is already getting 50,000 – 100,000+ website visitors every month and you are not remarketing to share a recent blog post or activate a sales conversion, you are missing out. If you are starting from scratch and you don’t get enough traffic, remarketing should be your strategy for creating ads with the purpose of sharing useful content with your target audiences.

Whether your goal is to build an email list, increase your fan base or generate sales — remarketing is a great tactic that can help you convert your leads.

Boost conversions and generate sales

Nowadays, most people like to take their time before purchase. They research online, ask their friends, compare prices in order to make the best purchase decision. They may have seen your products, but completely forgot your brand or clicked away to continue their research. In these circumstances, remarketing is a powerful tool to gently remind them about your brand and influence their purchasing decision. If you’re wondering about excluding users from your remarketing campaigns, don’t worry – you can easily do that once they’ve completed a sale.

Jon Loomer explains: “Let’s say that you are targeting 100,000 people with your ad and 99% of those ignore it. But it’s that 1% who cared and who went to your website, which you can remarket to later. Then you sell or get an opt-in or page like or whatever you are aiming for. Driving that website traffic is very important to your strategy because that helps you build an audience, who may buy from you in the future.”

Reach the right audience

Finding the right audience can be a tough task to complete, especially on Facebook. According to Jon Loomer, “the big mistake people make is that they treat Facebook ads like they do Google ads and expect that people will be looking to buy from them. That is not the case, though. There is no buying intent on Facebook at least not yet and there is no true search. The point is that when you try to sell your products on Facebook, you are showing it in the News Feed of people who are interacting with their friends and families and the pages they care about. Don’t expect that people will trust you if they aren’t connected to you.”

That is what makes Facebook remarketing so powerful! It helps you reach the precise audiences that have already shown some interest in your brand, products or services, which translates to a certain level of awareness and increases your chances of being noticed.

Create targeted ad content

When using remarketing, you have access to the exact web page that your leads have visited and can refer to it when you to craft the content for your ad. For example, if you are an online shop with online visitors that have checked out your kitchen utilities section, it would be smart to create a remarketing campaign offering a special offer on those specific appliances.

Lower your overall advertising costs

On average, Facebook remarketing has a lower cost per customer acquisition compared to the one of a search engine. When online users actively search for a concrete item with the help of search engines, they are shown concrete results, most often related to a particular brand, category or industry. On Facebook, the scenario is a bit different: users are exposed to ads without searching for them, which makes Facebook advertising less targeted, but cheaper. Use this opportunity to spend your advertising budget wisely.

Upsell and generate loyalty in current customers

Remarketing can also be used as a smart technique to sell more to your existing clients and even develop long-term relationships and boost loyalty. For example, if someone bought a bike from your website, you can target them with Facebook ads showing suitable bike accessories, thus genuinely upsell.

By the same token, if your customers are happy with previous purchases, the chances of them engaging in a positive way with your ad post are very high. This can also make a great impression in the eyes of a potential new lead.

Expand your reach and customer base

With Facebook remarketing, you can go even further and discover potential customers with similar behavior and profiles to your existing ones or to the leads that have visited your website. Facebook gives you the opportunity to easily find them and target them with your ad, which increases your chances of expanding your lead and customer base.

How to get started?

Facebook offers effective remarketing tactics via tools called Custom and Lookalike Audiences. These are audiences that the social network virtually creates for you, based on certain criteria. They can be groups of people that have visited your website, have liked your page or have performed a certain action related to your brand. It can also be a group of people with similar behavior and characteristics to existing target groups. There are many options to choose from, so check them out in detail before you start your remarketing campaign. If you are planning to use remarketing in relation to your video content on video, check out our how-to guide here.